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FIVE

Jason:

Here’s the number for Amber, the artist who can do the Trailblazers keychains for you. And John says he might be able to get more of those beads for the bracelets. Here’s his info.

Bellamy:

Thanks.

Jason sat in the Sport U Arena, his seat hard beneath his ass, and stared at Bellamy’s one-word response on his phone from earlier today, cursing his own dumbassery. He’d fucked up. Why was he always fucking up with Bellamy?

“Maybe because you keep expecting the worst?” Hayworth said from Jason’s left.

Ironic, coming from the man who’d been so anti-love until he’d met his new guy, Felix, that he’d created an Anti-Valentine Club.

“Who asked you?” Jason grumbled.

“You did,” his best friend said unapologetically, mouth full of popcorn.

“It was a rhetorical question.”

Hayworth snorted a laugh. “Uh-huh.”

It was cold inside the arena as they waited for the hockey game to start. The DJ was keeping the crowd pumped, and they were currently playing a mash-up of a remixed “Pump up the Jam” by Technotronic and SNAP!’s “Rhythm Is a Dancer.”

Jason didn’t hate it.

“Sure you don’t want to exchange your generic jersey for one with Bellamy Jordan’s name on the back?” Hayworth teased.

Jason slouched in his seat, his new Trailblazers jersey bunching around his stomach. “Shut up.”

He’d been tempted, if only to prove to Bellamy that he wasn’t the jerk Bellamy thought he was. But what was the point? Bellamy didn’t know he was here. He’d sort of sideways offered Jason his comp seats, but it wasn’t like Jason was going to ask for them after he’d accused the guy of wanting to use him to get to Ryland.

What was it with old wounds and their ability to rear their fugly heads when you least wanted them to?

You obviously think so little of me, Bellamy had said the other night, the just like everyone else unsaid but implied.

Was that what Bellamy thought? That everyone thought little of him? Ryland certainly did, but that was one person.

Maybe getting traded so often did something to a person. Burst their confidence bubble a little and made them feel like they didn’t have anything to contribute.

Jason’s heart squeezed in his chest at the thought. And at the thought that he might’ve made things worse.

Despite who Bellamy was to Ryland, Jason hadn’t followed his career. He only knew about the many trades because he’d maybe googled him.

Okay, had googled him.

Sue him.

And he’d also maybe googled his and Ryland’s rivalry, too curious not to. Sure, he’d made a point of staying out of it—that was Ryland’s life and Jason had his own to live—but he’d wanted to know if what Bellamy had said was true.

Since his phone was still in his hand, he brought up the website he’d found earlier, the one that chronicled Ryland and Bellamy’s rivalry starting in their college days and?—

Hayworth scoffed and gestured at him with a fist full of popcorn. “Tell me you’re not reading that again.”

“Just . . . he’s kind of a dick.”

“Bellamy Jordan?”

“Ryland,” Jason said, feeling disloyal as fuck. “Bellamy wasn’t lying. Ryland goads him and picks him apart and teases him. And it’s not the funny ha-ha teasing that Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman get up to, you know? This is... This is mean.”

He was seeing a whole new side to Ryland, and he didn’t like it. It was like learning Santa Claus stole babies out of their cribs to give to his elves to raise.

“Why does he hate Bellamy so much?”

“Maybe there isn’t a reason,” Hayworth said, shifting his ginormous thirty-dollar bucket of popcorn in Jason’s direction. “There isn’t always. Sometimes people rub each other the wrong way simply because they breathe the same air.”

Jason grabbed a handful of popcorn and scrolled through the website, his chest tightening as he read some of his brother’s taunts. Who was this person Jason had grown up with? If he was Bellamy, he’d feel obligated to respond too.

Navigating back to his messaging app, he began typing out a short hey, I made it to your game after all text but deleted it without sending.

“You could just tell him you’re sorry for thinking the worst of him,” Hayworth suggested. “And you must be sorry, otherwise you wouldn’t have shelled out two hundred and fifty bucks a ticket to sit right behind the home team’s bench.”

Jason hunched his shoulders. It was embarrassing, but he was hoping Bellamy would turn and spot him sitting two rows back.

“He’s going to be too busy playing hockey to notice you,” Hayworth muttered, reading Jason’s mind like only a best friend could.

“Remind me why I brought you along?”

“Moral support? You didn’t want to sit here by yourself? You love me and wanted to treat me to a hockey game? You wanted the love expert’s wisdom? Take your pick.”

Jason scoffed. Love expert, my ass. Up until a few weeks ago, Hayworth would’ve rather had a root canal every day for a week than call himself a love expert.

The Trailblazers and their opponents for tonight, Tampa Bay, skated onto the ice for the pre-game warm-up along with a flurry of pucks. The DJ, still in their ’90s dance-hits era, launched a mash-up of Culture Beat’s “Mr. Vain” and Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants.”

It took a minute to find Bellamy among the sea of green St. Patrick’s Day Trailblazers jerseys—instead of their usual green, white, and red—and once he did, Jason couldn’t look away from him. The other players, the crowd, Hayworth... they were blurred around the edges.

“I like him,” he murmured quietly.

Hayworth offered his bucket of popcorn again. “I know, buddy. What are you going to do about it?”

That was the million-dollar question. Because Jason was sorry, sure, and he regretted thinking the worst of Bellamy...

But it would happen again. Dustin and Tommy—the two guys who’d used him for access to Ryland—had left their mark, made it difficult for him to trust. Jason wanted to give Bellamy the benefit of the doubt, especially since, by all accounts, he really didn’t start shit. He was the guy who went out of his way to visit his grandparents, and who wore a scarf with dragons embroidered on it, and who’d looked so disheartened before he’d taken off the other night after dinner.

Jason would have trouble trusting him if he were a regular guy.

As the man Ryland had been butting heads with for a decade?

Shaking his head, sick of his own circling thoughts, he focused on enjoying the game with his best friend. When Bellamy scored near the end of the second period, Jason cheered as loud as anyone when the goal horn sounded throughout the arena. He sat close enough to the ice to see the expression of utter joy that crossed Bellamy’s face when the puck hit the back of the net, but the punch to Jason’s guts came when Bellamy’s teammates jumped on him in celebration and Bellamy’s joy turned to wonder.

And all Jason could think was That’s a guy I want to know.

And maybe he could. Maybe he could set everything else aside and try.

Because he didn’t want to be the guy who let fear get in his way.